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Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#151
post #70
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that documentation shouldn’t need to be updated nearly every other day.

Consider that every time you start a session with Claude Code. It's effectively a new engineer. The system doesn't learn like a real person does, so for it to improve over time you need to manually record the insights that for a normal human would be integrated by the natural learning process.

Sleep time compute architectures are changing this.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#152
You know when Claude Code for Terminal starts scroll-looping and doom-scrolling through the entire conversation in an uninterruptible fashion? Just try reading as much as of it as you can. It strengthens your ability to read code in an instant and keeps you alert. And if people watch you pretend to understand your screen, it makes you look like a mentat.

It’s actually a feature, not a bug.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#153
post #82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use Opus 4.5. This drives up price faster than quality though. Also increases latency.

Obviously the Anthropic employee advertising their product wants you to pay as much as possible for it.

The generosity of the Max plans indicates otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve yet to see any real work get done with agents. Can you share examples or videos of real production level work getting done? Maybe in a tutorial format? My current understanding is that it’s for demos and toy projects

I use Junie to get tasks done all the time. For instance I had two navigation bars in an application which had different styling and I told it make the second one look like the first and... it made a really nice patch. Also if I don't understand how to use some open source dependency I check the project out and ask Junie questions about it like "How do I do X?" or "How does setting prop Y have the effect of Z?" and f…

This is a lot of good reasons not to use it yet IMO

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#155
post #37

Hey, Boris from the Claude Code team here. A few tips: 1. If there is anything Claude tends to repeatedly get wrong, not understand, or spend lots of tokens on, put it in your CLAUDE.md. Claude automatically reads this file and it’s a great way to avoid repeating yourself. I add to my team’s CLAUDE.md multiple times a week. 2. Use Plan mode (press shift-tab 2x). Go back and forth with Claude until you like the plan b…

I’ve yet to see any real work get done with agents. Can you share examples or videos of real production level work getting done? Maybe in a tutorial format? My current understanding is that it’s for demos and toy projects

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Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#156
post #61
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Claude MD is like the documentation you hand to a new engineer on your team that explains details about your code that they wouldn't otherwise know. It's not bad to need one.

But that documentation shouldn’t need to be updated nearly every other day.

Have you never looked at your work's Confluence? Worse, have you never spent time at a company where the documentation wasn't frequently updated?

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#157
post #10

Using voice transcription is nice for fully expressing what you want, so the model doesn't need to make guesses. I'm often voicing 500-word prompts. If you talk in a winding way that looks awkward when in text, that's fine. The model will almost certainly be able to tell what you mean. Using voice-to-text is my biggest suggestion for people who want to use AI for programming (I'm not a particularly slow typer. I can…

> I'm not a particularly slow typer. I can go 70-90 WPM on a typing test. However, this speed drops quickly when I need to also think about what I'm saying. Typing that fast is also kinda tiring, whereas talking/thinking at 100-120 WPM feels comfortable. This doesn't feel relatable at all to me. If my writing speed is bottlenecked by thinking about what I'm writing, and my talking speed is significantly faster, that…

That's fair. I sometimes find myself pausing or just talking in circles as I'm deciding what I want. I think when I'm speaking, I feel freer to use less precise/formal descriptions, but the model can still correctly interpret the technical meaning

In either case, different strokes for different folks, and what ultimately matters is whether you get good results. I think the upside is high, so I broadly suggest people try it out

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve yet to see any real work get done with agents. Can you share examples or videos of real production level work getting done? Maybe in a tutorial format? My current understanding is that it’s for demos and toy projects

I use Junie to get tasks done all the time. For instance I had two navigation bars in an application which had different styling and I told it make the second one look like the first and... it made a really nice patch. Also if I don't understand how to use some open source dependency I check the project out and ask Junie questions about it like "How do I do X?" or "How does setting prop Y have the effect of Z?" and f…

Manually styling two similar things the same way is a code smell. Ask the ai to make common components and use them for both instead of brute forcing them to look similar.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#159
For me what vastly improved the usefulness when working with big json responses was to install jq in my system and tell the llm to use jq to explore the json, instead of just trying to ingest it all together. For other things I explicitly ask it to write a script to achieve something instead of doing it directly.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of many experienced and capable engineers working on complex stuff who are driving basically all their development through agents. This includes production level work. This is the norm now in the SV startup world at least. You don't just YOLO it. You do extensive planning when features are complex, and you review output carefully. The thing is, if the agent isn't getting it to the point where you feel like you…

Can you show some example? I feel like there would be streams or YouTube lets plays on this if it was working well

The real secret to agent productivity is letting go of your understanding of the code and trusting the AI to generate the proper thing. Very pro agent devs like ghuntley will all say this.

And it makes sense. For most coding problems the challenge isn’t writing code. Once you know what to write typing the code is a drop in the bucket. AI is still very useful, but if you really wanna go fast you have to give up on your understanding. I’ve yet to see this work well outside of blog posts, tweets, board room discussions etc.

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